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McGrath Boulevard

Updated October 31, 2026

What's happening

The project to tear down the McCarthy Viaduct and turn Route 28 into a surface street is running on two clocks, and the second one has slipped. MassDOT's $130 million McGrath Boulevard reconstruction runs from Broadway at the East Somerville/Winter Hill line south to Squires Bridge. Mobility Director Brad Rawson and Senior Transportation Planner Justin Schreiber told the Traffic and Parking Committee on March 16 that it is heading for a 75%/100% design milestone, bids by late 2027 and construction in 2028. Rawson repeated the date on October 21: "Folks, it's no longer a vision, it's a committed project. It's scheduled to get underway about 15 months from now" (Streetsblog Mass, Oct 22). The bridge work at the south end is on its own, later track. At a MassDOT public meeting in late July, the team replacing Squires Bridge said its 25% design package goes in this fall, another design hearing is planned for early 2027, and construction "could begin in 2030", lasting three to four years.

The city's own study of what the boulevard means for the neighborhoods around it is now under way. The Planning Division has hired Utile, the firm behind the Union Square Neighborhood Plan and the zoning ordinance, to look at the local effects of grounding the highway, and the two teams held kickoff meetings in October (Planning Division newsletter, Oct 30).

North of Broadway, the corridor's first rebuild is already paying off. MassDOT's $10.5 million safety project at the tangle of Mystic Avenue, McGrath, the Fellsway and the I-93 ramps, the stretch neighbors call the "corridor of death," is well under construction and due in 2027. Drivers haven't killed anyone there since April 2021, when a hit-and-run driver killed 72-year-old Marshall Mac crossing McGrath at Blakeley Avenue, and driver-inflicted injuries have fallen nearly 80% since 2021, per MassDOT crash data. The project has taken a third southbound lane for a 10-foot shared-use path from Puritan Road in Ten Hills along Foss Park, added a path under I-93 on the north side of Mystic Avenue where there had been no sidewalk, and moved McGrath's curbs for a raised bike lane between Blakeley and Broadway. The complaint is the construction zone itself. Resident Emily Vides says new 2022 crosswalks and ramps have been torn up with no pedestrian detour, and Streetsblog saw people walking in the Mystic Avenue roadway on October 8 and 21: "it's always matter of time before someone gets hurt again."

MassDOT says the boulevard and the bridge will be built at the same time. The council report on the March update put boulevard construction a year earlier, in 2027, at $20–30 million a year for about four years. McGrath bridge work and state approval delays were the main reason several 2025 city bike projects went unbuilt.

The story

What is being built

The boulevard replaces the elevated viaduct with a slower street at ground level. Rawson makes the case for a smaller road with traffic counts: Route 28 now carries roughly two-thirds of the traffic it did 15 years ago. He called the project the product of "more than twenty years of work."

The southern end is a separate MassDOT project running from 3rd Street in Cambridge to just south of Poplar Street, according to Streetsblog Massachusetts. It builds two bridges.

  • Squires Bridge carries McGrath over the Fitchburg commuter rail line and the Green Line's Union Square branch in Brickbottom. It becomes a 300-foot single-span bridge with no intermediate piers, which leaves room for a future Grand Junction Community Path. It will have two lanes each way, raised and separated bike lanes, sidewalks and a 7-foot median. Crews rebuild the northbound side first, run three lanes on the old southbound structure, then swap.
  • The second bridge carries Route 28 over a relocated Somerville Avenue Extension, the alley locals call "Scary Way." It will meet Linwood Street at a T, with a two-way bike path beside a single one-way traffic lane.

The September 24 Council agenda carried the Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee's comments on Squires Bridge (26-1442) and a resident's on McGrath bike lanes (26-1443) (agenda). PTAC's final letter isn't in our sources; its September 17 draft focused on stairway connections to Brickbottom, crossing safety, transit connections and environmental mitigation.

At the corridor's southern tip, the six-story, 145-room Moxy hotel straddling the Cambridge line at McGrath and O'Brien highways (the "Somerbridge Hotel" in Somerville's files) now has every permit. Cambridge's Board of Zoning Appeal voted unanimously on October 15 to match the special permits Somerville granted in June (Independent, Oct 22). The site matters for the path network: behind it, the unbuilt last piece of Cambridge's Grand Junction path would cross O'Brien Highway from Gold Star Mothers Park to meet the Community Path. The owners are giving an easement and will pay the first 25% of design for the connecting ramp, up to $105,000. Friends of the Community Path co-president Lynn Weissman asked Cambridge to require full design funding, since nothing is identified for the rest of the design or for construction; attorney Jim Rafferty called that "onerous," and the board declined to go beyond Somerville's terms.

The fights over the 25% design

The Council engages mostly through PTAC's comment letter on MassDOT's 25% boulevard design. At-large Councilor Ben Wheeler and Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen put that letter on the agenda January 8. Wheeler flagged "trade offs between the convenience of drivers from outside Somerville and the safety of Somerville residents, particularly children." At-large Councilor Kristen Strezo called McGrath "the corridor of death." The committee walked the letter point by point on March 16. Four points are still unresolved:

  • Otis Street. PTAC wants a full signal where the pedestrian overpass is today, but state traffic-volume rules may block it. If they do, the city wants a rectangular rapid flashing beacon rather than a HAWK beacon, which goes dark when inactive. Schreiber cited a fatal Mystic Avenue crash involving a HAWK. Advocates did win a raised crosswalk, a first for MassDOT on a state highway. Ward 2 Councilor JT Scott: "It's never too late to correct a mistake."
  • Speed. PTAC asked for a 25 mph target, and MassDOT set 30. Today's 85th-percentile speeds run from the upper 30s to 40.
  • The median. The city is holding out for a 10-foot minimum to fit mature trees, pedestrian refuges and room for future bus platforms or a center-running busway.
  • Local access. MassDOT's design cuts the car connection from southbound McGrath into Virginia and Aldrich Streets.

Buses are a live gap. The MBTA's Route 85 runs on Washington Street because McGrath has no safe southbound stop between Highland Avenue and Broadway. It moves onto the boulevard once the street is rebuilt. The MBTA's separate proposal to cut Route 80, which runs along McGrath, is on Mobility projects.

Crossing guards, noise, and the pipes underneath

Ward 1 Councilor Matthew McLaughlin has pushed for state crossing guards on McGrath since January. On July 1, Crossing Guard Supervisor Salvy Cicero said the state has denied a guard at Broadway, citing its two guards at Pearl Street and the Otis Street overpass. Ward 4 Councilor Jesse Clingan answered that the overpass argument dies when the overpass does. On May 14 the Council asked MassDOT to prevent extremely loud overnight construction, after multi-night test boring.

The city is spending ahead of the state. On April 23 it approved an $8,284,000 water main bond and a $2,000,000 sewer bond concentrated on the McGrath corridor, to replace century-old pipes before MassDOT digs. Both are repaid through water and sewer bills. The Union Square East planning study was folded into the McGrath Boulevard planning study, whose RFP drew seven responses. Utile won it after what the Planning Division called a cross-division review.

What's next

  • Fall 2026: MassDOT's 25% design package for Squires Bridge and the Somerville Avenue Extension goes in for review, with PTAC's comments now at the Council.
  • Under way: Utile's McGrath Boulevard planning study for the city, kicked off in October; no public meetings scheduled in our sources yet.
  • Early 2027: design public hearing on the bridge project.
  • Roughly spring 2027: the boulevard's 75%/100% design milestone.
  • Late 2027: the Mystic Avenue–Fellsway safety project finishes; construction bids for the boulevard, with work starting about January 2028 by Rawson's count. Bridge construction could start in 2030.
  • Undated: funding for the rest of the Grand Junction ramp's design and its construction; Gilman Square Neighborhood Council comments remain in Public Health and Public Safety; McLaughlin's follow-up with state Rep. Mike Connolly on crossing guards; the Urban Design Commission's September 22 review of 382 McGrath Highway (outcome not in our sources yet).

The thread resolves at the 75%/100% design freeze. That's the city's last realistic chance to win a signal at Otis Street, a 25 mph target speed, and the sidewalk and median widths it wants. Related: other street and transit projects, traffic calming and Vision Zero, Union Square.